- December 4, 2025
TALLAHASSEE — Controversy continued to churn last week over an immigrant-detention center in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republican leaders.
A group of Democratic legislators who were denied access to the detention center — already the subject of a federal lawsuit by environmental groups — are asking the Florida Supreme Court to force DeSantis “to provide immediate, unannounced access” to the remote facility.
Rep. Michelle Rayner, D-St. Petersburg, Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, and Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, are seeking what is known as a “writ of quo warranto,” after the DeSantis administration refused to allow them to enter the facility on July 3.
The lawsuit pointed to a Florida law which allows legislators and certain other state officials “at their pleasure” to visit state correctional institutions.
“The blatant, illegal, and cavalier nature of violation of the Florida Constitution and statutory authority puts members of the legislative and judicial branches at risk if we, those sworn to protect and defend the Constitution and rule of law, do not speak out loudly and boldly against its trespasses and transgressors,” the lawsuit said.
The lawmakers are represented by Democratic state Rep. Ashley Gantt of Miami, and Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis of Ocoee. Gantt, Davis and Rayner recently launched a law firm.
The state this month began operating the detention center at a remote site surrounded by the Everglades and the Big Cypress National Preserve, as DeSantis and other Florida Republican leaders assist in Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit last month seeking a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to put the facility on hold.
The federal challenge contends the facility should be halted because it threatens environmentally sensitive areas and species in the South Florida wetlands. The center is co-located with the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a remote site used for flight training. Attorney General James Uthmeier touted the facility in a social-media post this week as a “one-stop-shop deportation center.”
Amid the controversy, emergency management officials on Wednesday, July 9, invited state legislators and members of Congress to visit the facility on Saturday, setting up a 90-minute tour restricted to lawmakers.
Democratic U.S. House members Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Lois Frankel, Darren Soto, Maxwell Frost and Jared Moskowitz said they already were planning to visit the detention center this weekend.
“We do not need permission to conduct lawful oversight. This sanitized tour is not real oversight,” the Democrats said in a statement Wednesday.
In other immigration news, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, July 9, rejected a request by Uthmeier that would have at least temporarily allowed enforcement of a new state law targeting undocumented immigrants who enter the state.
Uthmeier last month asked the Supreme Court for a stay of a temporary injunction that U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued in April to block the law. Such a stay, if granted, would have allowed enforcement of the law while an underlying legal battle about the injunction played out.
The Supreme Court denied the stay request.
As is common, the Supreme Court did not explain its reasons, but the decision likely means the law will remain on hold at least until the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals can rule on a state appeal of the preliminary injunction. A panel of the appeals court is slated to hear arguments in October.
The law, which passed during a February special legislative session, created state crimes for undocumented immigrants who enter or re-enter Florida.
Williams ruled that the law (SB 4-C) likely was preempted by federal immigration-enforcement authority. In part, she pointed to the law requiring that violators go to jail and indicated that could conflict with federal authority.
In seeking the stay, Uthmeier’s office disputed that the state law is preempted, saying it “purposefully tracks federal law to a tee.”
Attorneys for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, the Farmworker Association of Florida and two individual plaintiffs filed the federal lawsuit in South Florida, alleging, in part, that it violates what is known as the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility.
A federal judge on Wednesday, July 9, blocked a key part of a new law that imposed additional restrictions on the state’s ballot-initiative process, finding that a provision prohibiting people who are not U.S. citizens or Florida residents from collecting and delivering signed petitions is likely unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said the ban against non-Florida residents and non-U.S. citizens “imposes a severe burden on political expression that the state has failed to justify.”
Walker’s ruling, however, allowed several other parts of the law to remain in effect, including a requirement that people who gather more than 25 signed petitions register with the state and a moratorium on elections supervisors processing petitions from July 1 through Sept. 30.
The judge found the restrictions on who can collect and deliver petition signatures went too far in limiting the activities of Florida Decides Healthcare and Smart & Safe Florida, political committees behind separate proposed constitutional amendments.
Lawyers for the DeSantis administration have contended that the restriction on out-of-state residents and non-U.S. citizens handling signed petitions was necessary to alleviate difficulties investigating potential fraud conducted by people who are outside Florida.
The state “has great leeway in regulating the ballot initiative process,” Walker acknowledged.
“But here, the state has categorically barred entire classes of people from participating in the core political speech that is central to this process. Moreover, the state has failed to demonstrate that this severe burden on speech is narrowly tailored to furthering its compelling interest in investigating and combatting fraud in the petition initiative process,” he added.
Under the law, effective July 1, groups that “knowingly” violate the restriction on non-U.S. citizens and non-Florida residents could face $50,000 fines and other sanctions. Petitions delivered by such people would have to be scrapped.
